Click-whirr Inferences and Automatic Fraud
Ted Richardson at Fraud, Phishing, and Financial Misdeeds has an interesting example of , what Robert Cialdini, calls a "click whirr" inference, and how fraud criminals are taking advantage of it. According to Ted Richardson,
Over the weekend Chris Gunn (owner of BIZynet) and the newsgroup Biz.Stolen sent me an interesting e-mail with the title "Osam (SP) Bin Laden Captured." Here is a copy of the e-mail:From: david.jones@gmail.com
Subject: Osam Bin Laden Captured
Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2006 09:07:48 -0500
To: biz-stolen@moderators.isc.org
Hey, Just got this from CNN, Osama Bin Laden has been captured! A video and some pictures have been released. Go to the link below for pictures, I will update the page with the video as soon as I can.
*Link removed because it was still active when checked earlier today. The "stuff" on here will ruin a good home PC.
Thinking this was too good to be true, I went to the CNN site and found a lot about Bin Laden -- who is being featured as part of a special this week -- but nothing about him being captured.
How many of us would click on the link, without even thinking that some scam criminal had set the link up to ruin our PC? It would be very hard to keep our skepticism in check. Fortunately, there is a simple skeptical response: the view sources command in Outlook will reveal where your click will lead you to. Would that there was a analogous check for the source of business opportunity frauds.
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Comments
Michael,
Thanks for helping get the word out - I like your blog.
Ted was my ghost name - as of today, I decided I would start writing under my own name, which is Ed.
Regards,
Ed
Posted by: ed dickson | August 27, 2006 11:14 PM